Day 3 - Ft Collins, then on to Oklahoma City

A typical evening in the front range last night: intense thunderstorms with lightning raining down nearby. At times, the pause between the lightning and the thunder was only a second, and it was loud!

I woke this morning to cooler temps, thanks to the rain, and a beautiful sunrise with the orange glow from the prairie peaking over the hills.

Melissa and I took a long walk - 3.6 miles on the level. This wouldn’t have been a big deal except I live at sea level and she lives at 5,200’, making breathing a chore.

Melissa dropped me off in town on her way into work. I met Brian Johnston, a Mechancial Engineer and NROTC classmate from Cornell who was also based at Whidbey Island with me. Today was the first time we’d seen each other since 1991. Our hair was grayer, and there was less of it, but underneath, we were the same people.

We caught up on our families and careers. Neither of us followed the path that most folks would have thought for either of us. Brian did a full 20 years in the Navy, then various engineering and project management roles. Me married a physician and settled in Colorado, where they have a son and daughter, both now in college. He is preparing to take his family white water rafting down the Colorado river through the Grand Canyon in a few weeks, which promises to be an amazing experience.

It’s hard to cover 30 years in just an hour, so we’ll have to finish catching up next time - I just hope it’s not another 33 years.

I ducked into a grocery store and grabbed myself a Colorado peach. While other places have good peaches, none are as good as those here.

I Ubered to the airport and got airborne as soon as I could to try and get out of the 97F heat.

Once clear of Denver’s airspace, I climbed up to 11,500’ to get to cooler air. Since I sit under a plastic bubble, I needed it. That high, and it was still almost 70F. The issue with going so high is there’s not much oxygen. My Oxygen saturation has dropped to 88%, which makes me drowsy and fatigues me such that I am really tired long after a flight.

If you have ever seen the terrain of SE Colorado and all of Oklahoma, you’d know there’s not much to look at other than farm sections, straight lines stretching horizon to horizon, all broken only by an occasional town. It’s because of this that the middle of the country is often called “Flyover Country” by most pilots.

So what do I do to pass the miles? Modern technology allows me to connect my phone to the plane’s audio system, so I listen to educational podcasts like Freakanomics, Hidden Brain, and History that Doesn’t Suck, old time radio shows like Gunsmoke, Johnny Dollar, and Sam Spade, as well as a variety of music. If the air smoothes out, I may us the time to write part of these blogs while the autopilot handles that hard job.

The air did smooth out once I left my intermediate fuel stop at West Woodward, OK, where it was 104F. Ouch! I used the smooth air to jot down some notes for this blog, but more importantly, it gave me the chance to look into some anomalies on the engine indications. I may be having a spark plug going south on me - I’ll check that in the morning when both the air and my engine are cool. Landing in Oklahoma City, it was also 104F, an inhuman temp.

I was met at the airport by Curtis, Patricia and Daniel Plunk. Curtis was in my squadron and class for Prowlers at Whidbey Island, and he married Patricia right after Kay and I got married. Their family had just moved from Maryland out here to Oklahoma about a year ago to be close to their eldest daughter who just had a baby.

After securing the airplane, we set out across town to go eat at a place called Pop’s. It is an iconic burger place on the old Route 66. We took a long time to eat and actually ended up chatting with Daniel all about colleges, how to select them and how to figure out which would be a good one both for him and any future career aspirations he might have.

After stopping for ice cream on the way back to the hotel, they dropped me off, and I have been doing a variety of administrative tasks such as writing this blog, looking at potential places to go in this coming week and how they will be affected by severe weather, such as thunderstorms, and talking with Kay. 

So I am obviously a little bit concerned about the impact of any maintenance issues might have on this big plant trip but like I always have in the past, I will work through them. Part of this is I have a variety of tools and parts back home, but they were locked in my hangar and Kay does not have security access to get there. As result, I had to draw a really nice friend by the name of Charlie O’Neil, who let Kay into the Hangar so she could get the items I needed. It was great of Charlie to give up his evening to do this. 

Every time I take one of these Flyabouts, no matter how carefully I have prepared the airplane, I encounter a maintenance issue that I have to resolve. It is always stressful because the outcome of the entire trip is always in the balance. I have always been able to resolve the issue, but is always frustrated me, and it appears that this trip will be no different.

I’m going to spend a few minutes proofreading this, post it, and then go to bed. The heat has taken an awful lot out of me and I am bushed.